Swamped!

The recent lack of blog posts on the Steam-Powered Typewriter are not due to chronic lazyboy-itis (honest!) but the same old demands of day-to-day life: I began my final Open University course, Children's Literature, last month and the sheer mountain of reading involved (thirteen novels from Swallows and Amazons to Treasure Island to Harry Potter) is taking up the majority of my spare time - as well as the various assignments, of course.

Right now I'm in the final editing stages of the second Barclay Heath mystery (the follow-up to The Hotel Galileo) but finding the amount of time needed to make any kind of progress with it is proving increasingly difficult. I am however very excited about the second book. I've had some amazingly positive feedback from Galileo and also some healthy, constructive criticism, too, especially in the area of maintaining a returning character within a series of books. I'm happy to say that all of these comments and suggestions have been addressed in the follow-up and I feel the story is even stronger and it's been great to flesh out the character of my detective, Barclay Heath, a little more and the ending is . . . well, very emotional. At least it was when I wrote it. Really hoping to get the manuscript finished by Christmas.

I will announce the title of the second Barclay Heath mystery here on this blog in the very near future. I really like it and I hope you'll like it, too. Watch this space...

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